


A College Crusade

by CGKrows



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, BAMF Balin (Tolkien), Bilbo is So Done, Don't fuck with Millennial/Gen Z college kids, Eventual Happy Ending, Excessive Academic Babble, Fix-It, Fluff and Humor, Foxes, Gandalf Likes to Keep Secrets, Gandalf Meddles, Gandalf is a Troll, Gen, He just hides it under layers upon layers of gruff looks and armor, History Jokes, In this house we live and breathe academia until we're sick with it, Nerdiness, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rationalizing the corruption of Mirkwood with plant science and ecology, Sassy Bilbo Baggins, Slow Burn, Tattoos, The dwarf knows his politics, Thorin is a Softie, Wizards abduct college students for low-cost labor in exchange for valuable work experience
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:49:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24834109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CGKrows/pseuds/CGKrows
Summary: What starts out as a random encounter with an elderly scholar in a dusty college library―debating literature and history as academics have a habit of doing―suddenly becomes a bizarre adventure that drags one disgruntled student across a fantasy world that harkens closely to an out-of-control D&D campaign. Can she manage to survive this madcap quest? The hobbit’s nice, at least.[Alternatively titled:I Went on a Quest to Kill a Dragon Because I Would Rather Do That Instead of a Fifteen-page Research Paper: An Academic Exploration in Productive Procrastination, orThorin All But Dared Me, I Swear: A Tale of One Competitive College Student's Journey in Middle-Earth]
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins & Original Female Character(s), Thorin Oakenshield & Original Female Character(s), Thorin's Company & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30





	A College Crusade

**Author's Note:**

> In which somewhere between a bad joke about _St. George and the Dragon_ and clever ways of dealing with goblins, this story arose. Because what if I dumped a younger academic (exceptionally bookish, hopelessly nerdy, but isn’t afraid to throw down) in a pre-LOTR Middle Earth?
> 
> Idk, I can’t remember if I once tried to post this or not. But quarantine has compelled me to revisit this either way. Read at your own risk, I guess? I overwrote a good part of it, so new content either way. It’s vaguely (or maybe excessively) academic at times. I may have taken some pot-shots at the college system. I also have some adult themes going on, so thus the M-rating. It might go to E-rating if I end up writing gratuitous fight scenes and too-controversial topics.

Victoria didn’t have enough awareness beyond the spread of open library books, her junky spiral notebook, and the glaring laptop screen to realize she was being stared at.

It wasn’t exactly her fault that she was so unaware. College was just… _draining_. Between the hectic rush of the quarter system, the demands of her professors, research-intensive assignments, work, and any weak attempts at social interaction, the young woman was stretched tenuously thin. It also didn’t help that she was trying to transform a poorly-worded rant into a somewhat coherent argument through nothing but scarce references and what she vaguely remembered from watching a crappy documentary on the History Channel. Which, by the way, she just managed to buy off eBay for six dollars so she could rewatch it within the next three days. 

In all honesty, Victoria should have simply given up on her off-the-wall concept. Why? Because while she was a senior at a reasonably nice four-year, she was _a transfer student_ . And transfer students start at nice four-year colleges as junior students, forcing them to catch up with the already-there junior students in terms of understanding the library resources and knowing what was generally required of them from their professors. She had a shaky familiarity with the library’s system, putting her at a serious disadvantage. It made perfectly logical sense for transfers to just slip in with everyone else when viewed through the lens of unit totals, but it was a _complete, utter bitch_ if you were a transfer student double-majoring in two seriously academic departments hoping desperately to garner the favor of the department heads.

Which, of course, Victoria was.

So the young woman didn’t have enough awareness of her surroundings to notice that someone had decided to sit down at her secluded table. She was too focused on trying to save herself from her own procrastination to really bother looking up. And, it wasn’t as if Victoria should have anticipated sharing her table. Less than four people knew there was a table squeezed behind the shelving section H-J, where the overhead bar lights were broken to the point the entire area surrounding shelving section H-J was a wannabe horror movie set. The only lights that worked were ironically placed directly over Victoria’s hidden workspace, though at times they flickered in the way fireflies blinked inconsistently while trapped within a mason jar.

The stranger, however, wasn’t about to be ignored.

“Good afternoon.”

Victoria startled at the greeting. The single earbud shoved into her left ear popped out as she jerked her head, her notebook flopped off to the side as it fell from one hand, and she misspelled _millenarianism_ with the other hand that had been pecking at the laptop’s keyboard. Her dark green eyes stared confusedly at the unknown individual through a pair of relatively large but flattering bronze-framed glasses perched precariously on her nose. Subconsciously, the young woman brushed a few fly-away strands of wispy black hair behind a studded ear.

“Err, good afternoon?”

“Hmmm,” the stranger hummed with amusement, “Do you mean to wish me a good afternoon, or mean that it is a good afternoon whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this afternoon; or that it is an afternoon to be good on?”

The person who sat across from Victoria at the table was questionably as old as her father―Mr. Bianchi to his coworkers―who worked through his retirement at the age of seventy-one so she could afford the stressfully-high college tuition. This stranger had a wealth of wrinkles and hands that were clearly beginning to suffer from arthritis like her mother, but very kind grey eyes. His hair was short, fluffy, and metallic, in that his hair hadn’t really begun to turn white except for a few random clumps at his sideburns. The man’s eyebrows were bushy, he visibly looked very European with an accent to go with, and his suit ensemble was tasteful but completely greyscale. Victoria wanted to say that this person was a professor or a visiting road scholar, but what scholar decided to make comments like that? Then again, philosophy majors were weird people on principle.

“Uh, the first one,” she said unsurely. “Do you need something?”

“Perhaps. I was hoping to speak with Mr. Henrickson over lunch today, but he was unfortunately waylaid. So I came here to the library instead, hoping to find some answers to some curious questions, when I noticed you tucked away here.”

“Henrickson? You mean Johnathan Henrickson?” she spoke with surprise. Henrickson was a well-regarded history professor on campus, with seven academic publications to his name and twelve years of tenure. She could see a would-be philosophy scholar being friends with him.

“Indeed!” the man said, smiling, “I knew him when he was quite young, back when he was still in England. Brilliant man, sharp. But enough about him; he missed lunch. What about you, my dear? What is your study?”

“Oh, well... I’m double-majoring in History and Linguistics, with a focus in American History. ‘Got minors for Political Science and Comparative Literature in the works. This is my senior year.”

“Ah, chronicles and language! Key aspects of society at large, and very important in defining groups of people as a whole. How many languages have you mastered in your pursuits so far?”

Victoria couldn’t believe this old scholar was real. He was like a stereotypical English intellectual, but with a little more wit and a healthy dose of dramatics. She found the fellow sitting across from her strangely charming. So much so, she managed to disengage from her trainwreck of a research paper―closing her sticker-laiden laptop and shuffling away her notebook―to talk to him for more than a few sentences. She needed a break from it all anyway.

“Most of the well-known romance languages, and I’m working my way through the slavic ones. I also know Arabic, ASL, and Xhosa,” she detailed, trying not to sound too proud of herself. Victoria had a serious passion for learning languages, and took maybe a little too much pride in it. Then again, she didn’t have much else to boast about beyond knowing an excessive number of trivial history factoids.

“Very impressive, though I’m surprised you haven’t bothered to learn anything of the older English languages through the History department. Nothing archaic for you, then?”

She made a face. “I’ve studied some old languages and dialects, alphabets, etcetera. I just can’t speak them, or really want to try. My thesis―which I hope I get to broaden when I apply for the PhD program here―is focused more on ‘the now’ here in America than in the past. But I do know how they sound, and could probably identify some of them if they were spoken. I took the medieval studies class by Henrickson for that reason, really. He gives a really great survey on old world language and art.”

He nodded his head. “He is quite good at his teaching. I’m curious: have you ever read the Golden Legend?”

Victoria blinked at the sudden topic change. “Err, I think? Isn’t that the supposed original text of St. George and the Dragon?”

“It is,” he confirmed. “What is your opinion of it?”

She raised a brow, both confused and a little incredulous. “What do you mean?”

“What are your feelings about the story, in the context of history and outside the context?”

Her expression clouded in thought as much as it did with her lack of interest. “Well, from my standpoint as a very sad excuse for a Catholic with a solid history background, it’s just another feel-good sainthood story. George is there at the right place and at the right time because God put him there. George tortured a dragon until it wouldn’t fight back when he threw a woman’s girdle around its neck. He made an entire city in Libya convert and erect a church in his name, and then beheaded the dragon. There are a ridiculous number of sainthood stories about saints converting shit tons of people through various means; George just used a dragon instead of the usual strategies.

“But beyond that? I really don’t see the point to the story. I mean, sure. George converted a supposed 50,000 people in one day. Very crazy, very impressive. Yet he only managed to do so by threatening Libyans with a poisonous dragon on a leash that was oozing death with every step it took. He had it tamed! He could have just killed it, but _no_ , he had to become the bad guy in this story to get his way. If anything, the dragon was the more innocent character in this version of the story. The beast was just living his life in the river and people were feeding it in desperate hopes it’d make it stop living in the river. It was their dumbass mistake. Who feeds pests if they want the pests to go away? The Golden Legend is ridiculous and nothing more than a propaganda tool to use on the masses.”

“Then what should have the Libyans done, if not feed the dragon?” the old scholar questioned.

She shrugged carelessly, gesturing vaguely. “I dunno, get a team of their own warriors to deal with it? I mean, if George could tame the dragon by stabbing it repeatedly with his spear near the joints of its wings, couldn’t a group of ten or so Libyan soldiers get their own spears to do the same? Bring some rope, maybe a net. Coat the spear tips with its own poison, _something!_ ”

He hummed, considering her stance. One of his arthritic hands rubbed at his chin. “Interesting. A resourceful answer too.”

Victoria was honestly lost on why the old man wanted her thoughts on such a weird topic. “Uh, thank you?”

He smiled. “You are very much welcome, my dear. Now as my next question: what version of St. George and the Dragon do you like?”

She shook her head at the absurdity of the conversation. “The one where he rode through the city, called Seline in the story, heard of their plight, and rode off to find the dragon about to eat the princess. He separates her from the dragon, and goes to confront it. It poisons his horse, and nearly kills him many times. But then as its head moves to strike him, he stabs it through the eye with his spear and continues to drive the weapon through until both the head and heart are stabbed. The princess converts, and so do her people. It’s honestly much happier and more reasonable than the Golden Legend.”

“Yes, it does sound more reasonable. Why, I never heard that version before. I do very much like it; not as dour,” he mused.

“Yeah,” she agreed blandly, watching him. Were all Brits this bizarre?

The elderly man nodded to himself, muttering under his breath, until he started with a sudden thought. “Oh! Speaking of dragons, what about the Hobbit?”

She made a face. “What, we’re talking fiction now?”

“That we are,” he steamrolled with altogether too much cheer, “What is your opinion of that story? Can you compare and contrast the similarities and differences between both the Hobbit and the Golden Legend?”

Victoria was beginning to regret talking to this ornery English intellectual.

“I like the Hobbit a lot,” she answered skeptically, though the admiration in her voice was unmistakable. “Anything written by Tolkien, really. His ability to world-build and weave all his linguistic fantasy together into such a coherent, almost historical whole is fantastic. Which I guess isn’t a surprise, because he was a Linguist who loved to make up his own languages and had a serious passion for European history. But… hmm.” The young woman stops, trying to discern differences in stories she never thought anyone would compare to each other. “While the Golden Legend is about one saintly man off to kill a dragon, the Hobbit’s a motley group of people determined to steal from a dragon instead. It’s only thanks to Bilbo’s foresight to warn Bard via thrush that Smaug even dies. And, the dragons are different. One dragon just exists to poison a river, the other is a fantasy-standard fire drake guarding a hoard of dwarf-gold. Uh… the Hobbit was written for children to read while the Golden Legend is just a whole lot of Old World propaganda. The technically-hero dies in the Battle of Five Armies while St. George lives to fight another day.”

“Technically-hero?” the man repeated with a furrowed brow.

“Yeah, you know! It’s a story from Bilbo’s perspective, so he’s the hero, but it’s really about Thorin trying to get back what’s his with Bilbo’s help. They’re kinda both heroes. Just one goes gold crazy and the other saves the first from being gold crazy.”

“I see,” he mused. “And what if there was another member to Thorin’s company?”

The scholar _had_ be fucking with her now. Just what sort of question was that? 

“What, like fan fiction? I don’t know,” she answered dismissively. “It’s just a story. Maybe another person would have made all the difference, or maybe adding another person would have been a recipe for disaster. You can’t predict the unpredictable.”

“Hmph,” he grunted, as if Victoria had declared an open challenge upon him. “We shall see, Miss…?”

“Er, Victoria. Victoria Bianchi.”

“Then good afternoon, Ms. Bianchi, and I wish you luck with your histories.” 

The old man huffed like a shuttering old car attempting to kick-start its engine before getting out of his seat. He moved with such surprising speed, striding between the bookshelves to disappear into the shadows. Victoria barely had a chance to call out to him.

“Wait! Who’re you?! I didn’t catch your name!” she called after him in utter confusion.

“Graham!” He hollered back without turning his head, “And I may yet see you again!”

And then the stranger was gone, like he was never there in the first place. Victoria looks at the chair left pulled away from the table, then down the bookshelves. The young woman shook her head.

“What in the world was that just now?” she muttered.

But Victoria didn’t let the peculiar encounter stop her from continuing her work, and her returned sense of determination was just what she needed to put her once-hopeless research paper to rights. Time passed unseen, with only her laptop and her research materials to keep the young woman company. The lights flickered now and again, but were otherwise ignored. A few equally hyper-focused students drifted past her table in search of very specific books in the half-light, and one blind fellow with an extremely fluffy Samoyed tried to hunt down his study group within the maze.

It’s when she finally remembered to glance at her iPhone―a dinosaur model shaped like a chunk of black and gunmetal bar soap and not some kind of new age communicator―Victoria realized she missed the last bus ride back home from campus.

“ _Oh crap!_ ” she cried, her outburst echoing in the darkened space of the library’s second floor. “Shit, what am I gonna do now? That was the only bus line in town that drives from here to home. Could I call a tipsy taxi this late? Is Uber available on campus? Christ, Vic, you’re such an idiot…”

The young woman scrambled to collect all her things and shoved them into her backpack, all the while viciously berating herself. The laptop into its protective case, loose leaf notes filed away in the spiral notebook. She threw the items into her black pit of a bag, being mindful of all her numerous moleskines and other trinkets haphazardly piled inside. The iPhone stuffed into the pocket of her large cotton sweatshirt, along with the wire wad of earbuds. Pulling on both straps of her bag, Victoria quickly gathered the library books and dashed down the bookshelves. She glanced about hurriedly, until finally finding a reshelving cart to dump the books.

Pulling out her phone, Victoria checked the Uber app. “Jesus, I’m an idiot. Of course Ubers are still driving at this time of night. It’s only ten thirty, for heaven’s sake,” she ranted under her breath.

The young woman scrolled over the map, attempting to figure out where to drop her pick-up pin as she rushed down the stairs. The young woman didn’t look up from the phone’s screen when she finally made it to the first floor, didn’t look up when she passed the front desk, and didn’t look up when she slammed her way through the front entrance of the library. Victoria was honestly too busy trying to plan out a way home via Uber.

Which is how she stumbled on the steps leading out onto the grass in front of the library, and summarily fell in the near-dark. Her head hit the dirt a little bit too hard, her phone flying from her hands. She could feel her belongings tumbling around inside the backpack.

“Ow! Dammit!”

Victoria’s eyes squeezed shut at the throbbing pain reverberating through her skull, her hands grasping at her temples. She shook her head slightly, rumpled in a heap of limbs, before blinking blearily. Her senses came back sluggishly.

“Where’d that damn phone…” 

She froze.

It was daytime, late afternoon at the least. The sun was low and the beginnings of a rosy sunset filled the sky. That immediately warned Victoria that something was _extremely wrong_. The sun was still out, and the grass was a very healthy green instead of a gardener’s half-dead nightmare. The air smelled cleaner than she could ever remember it being. No smoke, no exhaust, no lingering scents of fast food. There were trees, rocky outcroppings, and a soft breeze brushing against her face. No concrete, no school buildings, no poorly maintained lampposts, no bike racks, nothing even remotely similar to her college campus.

There instead were fourteen people standing around her with _medieval weapons_ drawn and a fifteenth guy standing off to the side with what looked to be a polished tree branch for a staff.

“What in the―”

* * *

“―name of God and all his bumbling Saints is going on here?!”

None of the dwarrow moved, though Thorin noticed Bilbo’s expression creased in confusion at the foreign woman’s exclamation.

Just an hour before, their company had set up camp for the evening. They had just traveled outside the boundaries of the Shire, traversing into the edges of the wilds between it and Bree. Bombur was tasked with preparing the meal, Thorin’s nephews were sent off to hunt, Bofur and Bifur walked off to collect firewood and kindling, Glóin went to start a rudimentary fire, Dwalin and Balin handled the ponies, with the rest to sort out their sleeping arrangements. The burglar made himself useful as Bombur’s helper.

Gandalf, however, had much to say to the exiled dwarven king in private counsel which said king didn’t really wish to hear.

“I understand that you are not keen to have another person join the company beyond Bilbo, but you must know how dangerous your path is. Especially if you are to make it to the mountain without wrecking all your political relations along the way!” the wizard expressed.

“What relations?” Thorin questioned plainly, absently stuffing his carved pipe with Old Toby he bought in Hobbiton. “Men are scornful more than helpful, and I will not seek aid from an elf. I have the help of a hobbit who is more grocer than burglar. My kin in the Iron Hills have already declared their positions in this matter, and they want no part in reclaiming Erebor. I have thirteen loyal dwarrow; what more could I ask for?”

Gandalf shook his head frustratedly. “You asked for my counsel on this quest, Thorin Oakenshield, and I am continuing to provide it! I told you before, and I will tell you again: A burglar is needed to steal from the dragon, but what will you do to be rid of the dragon? What will you do in the face of Thranduil or any other opposition? You will need the second companion, one with the mind for such a task. Someone with a sense of resourcefulness, and proper intelligence to outsmart Smaug.”

The dwarf huffed a breath. “And if I were to accept another member, who would it be? Another halfling? An elf? Or perhaps a man, with their weak wills and weaker minds?” he growled agitatedly.

“Neither,” the wizard declared shortly. “The companion I would have join this company would be neither. Not man, elf, or hobbit. They are sharp, incredibly well-educated, and untamable in ways innumerable. Sensible yet irrational; predictably unpredictable.”

Thorin was not comforted by the description, yet also not uninterested. His face gave away little, but it did express a slight degree of uncertainty. “And you think this person will manage to do what you claim? They will deal with whatever political upset that may occur, kill the dragon once and for all?” he questioned, a buried hint of hope in his skeptical tone.

“They will,” Gandalf said, “Or they will die trying.”

And it was with those final words the exiled king very reluctantly relented at last to the grey wizard’s wishes, allowing him to bring yet another character into their already burgeoning troupe of personalities. Gandalf promised, in his usual vague fashion, that the person will arrive soon. 

Thorin had bristled at the thought. What if he refused? Would there have been a crisis on his hands to further delay them? Clearly Gandalf had been prepared to force his hand if he had not decided to agree. It left the dwarf uncertain and wary of anyone who would approach their camp. He alerted Balin, who explained the situation to his brother, who then warned the company of a “coming guest.” Many of the dwarrow simply accepted it, keeping a careful eye out. Fíli and Kíli were quietly confused, but also excited at the prospect of more company. Dwalin wasn’t pleased. Bilbo said nothing, but was clearly interested in discovering who the other outsider of their group would be.

Which, apparently, was a magically-appearing _human woman_.

“Seriously,” she spoke again, her shaded emerald eyes darting about. Her accent was strange, and her clothes ever more so. “Who are you and what the hell is going on?”

“Ah, it is good to see you finally arrived, my dear.” Gandalf stepped forward, smiling. She, on the other hand, was doing quite the opposite.

“Arrived? What do you mean arrived?!”

The wizard hummed. “I did say to you we will see whether or not your words would prove true, yes?”

Her brow furrowed, lips pursing as her eyes narrowed. “What words? Just what are you going on about?!”

The old man huffed. “Really, Victoria, I thought you would at least recognize me! We just spoke some hours ago.”

Thorin blinked. Victoria? _What a peculiar name._ It sounded like _victor_ or _victory._ Such a name had never crossed his path in his travels. Balin’s expression said much the same. Bilbo looked keenly upon the conversation, if not rapt. 

The woman paused, her countenance briefly smoothing as she thought. She was not unattractive by human standards. Almost _pretty_. A reasonably soft feminine face, uniquely green eyes, lightly tanned skin with slight blemishes. Her untidy hair was the color of obsidian with sharp eyebrows to match. But, strangely enough, a pair of large spectacles rested on her nose. Thorin hadn’t ever seen a human wear such a thing, for he thought Men had yet to discover such technologies. Dwarrow, of course, were the more industrious race amongst the Free Peoples. Spectacles were not out of place among them. Victoria squinted through them now, eyeing Gandalf like she was desperately attempting to stick a memory to his face.

“Hours ago?” she repeated.

“Indeed,” Gandalf affirmed.

The young woman stared a little longer, before her eyes were blinking wide. “No!” she breathed in puzzled shock, ” _Graham?_ ”

The wizard grinned, chuckling. “Hello again, my dear.”

She shook her head with an aborted motion, very taken aback. “But you have a beard! And grey robes! And you look like―”

Victoria cut herself off. “Wait. Graham… Grah-am… Grey… Greyhame?” 

She made a noise that sounded like a growling bobcat, growing evermore irate. Some members of the company blinked, shifting warily. How could a human manage to make such a noise?

“You can’t be who I think you’re implying you are. They’re old fantasy fiction books; written by a English war veteran with an overactive imagination! You’re not real!”

The wizard continued to chuckle, before remarking, “Ah, but isn’t truth stranger than fiction? Because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, while the truth isn’t?”

“No,” she stated with all the firmness of an army captain. “Do not quote Mark Twain at me. Where the hell am I and why am I here?”

“Surely you remember what we discussed.”

Victoria looked ready to throttle the wizard. “What does comparing vastly different pieces of literature have to do with where I am? I’m a goddamn historian who can pass as an interpreter on a rainy day, a half-assed secretary at the worst, but not an english professor!”

Gandalf offered nothing but a disapproving gaze as he leaned on his staff. “You know the answer, Victoria. All you must simply do is look around you.”

She glared heatedly, but slowly did as he said. The woman’s stare dragged from company member to company member, lingering briefly at one point upon the hobbit. When her eyes settled upon Thorin, she seemed to stop. Her brow furrowed again, before she repeated her perusal. She mouthed numbers as she went.

“ _Ten… Eleven… Twelve...Thirteen…_ ”

The exiled king saw the exact moment she figured out Gandalf’s puzzle, for her face immediately began to contort with a volatile mixture of boiling rage, shock, and nigh-hysterical distress.

“St. George and the Dragon,” she said flatly.

Victoria’s head turned, gaze locking upon the grey wizard with an intensity that could melt silver steel. The dwarves and Bilbo looked on in continued bafflement.

“ _St. George and the Dragon_ ,” she spoke again. Yet her voice grew louder in volume, harsher in tone. Grating iron on stone. She took a few pointed steps closer to Gandalf. Thorin’s nephews shifted nervously, as they stood between Victoria and the elderly fellow.

“ ** _St. George and the motherfucking Dragon!_** ”

The young woman all but lunged, yelling out the words thrice like a malevolent curse. She was fast. If Fili and Kili had not been fortuitously placed in her way, she would have successfully punched Gandalf’s wrinkled wizard nose to a bloody mess. The pair caught Victoria around the waist and held firm to her arms, though barely managing to restrain her. Which, to the thirteen dwarrow watching, was quite the surprise. She didn’t exactly look all that strong. Humans in general were rarely stronger than a dwarf. Thorin found himself unexpectedly impressed.

“You fucking son of a bitch! Just wait until I get over there, you dusty-ass greyscale pile of horseshit! _Oh, you’re gonna have to catch these hands, Merlin!_ ” Victoria yelled, almost dragging the dwarven brothers along with her as she raged.

Gandalf, if possible, appeared even more disappointed. Though also mildly bewildered at her temper. He didn’t expect her show of strength any more than the dwarrow did. “Truly, Miss Bianchi, threats of violence are completely unnecessary. I did say that we’d see whether an unpredictable variable would change the balance of an unpredictable future.”

The young woman was so upset by his words that she halted in her tracks, her face reddening. A blood vessel on her forehead became scarily prominent, throbbing in time with each harsh breath that whistled from her pale rose lips. Fili and Kili nearly fell into a heap at her feet. 

“You would play with fate, with people’s lives, just to see how it’d turn out? What kind of _sick fuck_ are you? And what good am I to a troupe of dwarves?”

“Sometimes, my dear, a cause is worth making risky decisions for. Especially if such risks ensure the best future for us all. And you, Victoria, might very well be the originator of such change.”

She huffed, ignoring the curious stares of the dwarrow and hobbit. “I’m not Joan of Arc, let alone St. George who supposedly slew a dragon in Libya. I’m an academic with no talent beyond talking my way out of uncomfortable situations, sleeping over twelve hours on weekends, impulsively buying too many notebooks I might never get around to using, and getting into fights with my fellow students over their hopelessly stupid ideas.”

Gandalf would have none of Victoria’s rebuttal. “Joan of Arc did not praise fighting, but fought for her people and her beliefs. She did not fear the army that she was to fight. She was a peasant and a warrior; she was more gentle than the first and more violent than the last. She was a perfectly practical person who would did something.”

“Yeah, and what happened to her, Gandalf?” Victoria accused, “She was captured by the English whom she had a truce with after being shot off her horse. She was imprisoned, nearly raped multiple times, given a fake trial, and **_then burned at the stake_** ―”

“Enough!”

The arguing pair turned sharply. Thorin’s expression was a study in barely-maintained patience. Victoria thought he looked strangely regal, standing on the precipice of anger.

“The wizard claims you are a skilled mediator and competent warrior, enough so to defeat a dragon. He says I should hire you, but for what? Are you such a person?”

Victoria considered herself, like an author would consider the state of their main character. She peered inward in the face of a horribly impatient and taciturn dwarf, and wasn’t exactly sure what to say. On the surface, no. The young woman was a horrible choice for a company member. She had no prior fighting skills, she’d never killed anything before. She had rudimentary camping experience and even less practice in road trips. But Victoria had read her fair share of dragon-themed literature, and was aware of all the supposed weaknesses of dragons. She loved reading stuff from the High Fantasy genre. In the Hobbit, Smaug’s soft underbelly had been almost entirely covered in metal and gems except for one spot that had not properly adhered the bejeweled valuables to protect it. An arrow from Bard killed him, thanks to a thrush alerting him of the weakness. In other stories of dragons, the beasts are killed via their vulnerable eyes, repeatedly stabbing it in the neck, poisoning it, using a mirror to reflect its hypnotic abilities back at it, or stabbing upwards in the mouth toward the brain. And mediating? Victoria may be a historian and budding linguist, but she knew plenty of languages and was skilled at picking up more. The young woman was very good at arguing her point, despite hating to write persuasive papers. She did have a near-complete minor in Political Science.

And there was something about the dwarf's tone―he was one of her favorite Tolkien characters, Thorin Oakenshield, _holy shit_ ―that made her rise to his challenge. The temptation of a real, bonafide adventure was impossible for her big, wanderlust-filled heart. Victoria hadn’t been anywhere but school or home, hadn’t left California. Work, research. She hadn’t even left the United States! She wanted to see the world. She wanted that taste of Adventure. And, well… The young woman had a bad habit of being easily baited into challenges, even when they are ill-advised. 

“I’ve got fourteen languages worth of mediating experience, and I know more about dragons than you could ever hope to know. Not too sure about the competent warrior bit, seeing as that’s more of a matter of opinion, but I always finish a fight I’ve started. And I’m clearly going to be picking a deathmatch-style fight with a dragon sometime in the future with how insistent this… _wizard_ is. However, I do have a question,” she said, turning her head back toward Gandalf.

“At the end of this… _experiment_ ,” the young woman just about spat, “Will you send me back? No maybe’s or possibly’s, but wholly back to where I was? Because if I’m stuck here, complete cold turkey, I got some serious stipulations that need to be met.”

The grey wizard immediately waved a hand at her, worryingly dismissive and nonchalant. “Quite easily. The spell is simple, little to no preparation. I guarantee that you can return to your college exactly when you left it.”

For a split second, Victoria narrowed her eyes. Can? There was something suspicious about his phrasing. But the young woman didn’t dwell on it, or her blood pressure would skyrocket even higher than it already was. _Me? In Arda? And it’s real? I’m not sure if I should be scrambling around like an over-excited Tolkien fan or screaming myself hoarse over the fact I’ve been kidnapped by a friendly wizard to go on a quest to slay Smaug, Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities._

“Alright, okay,” she decided, though inwardly she felt no firm sense of certainty. “None of this makes much sense and I still desperately want to punch your lights out, Gandalf, but you know what? To hell with it all, I’ll come along. This is ten times better than sitting in the library writing papers on Christianity and culture for a bitch of a history professor!”

And that was it. Fate sealed.


End file.
